My hernia operation, Part Three . . .

01May

With the admonition that a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m furnishing a composite drawing of hernia areas, but please don’t be alarmed—it’s nicely drawn and gracefully presented. Had you worried there for a moment, I imagine.

Now droning on:

This is the third posting of my quadrilogy, the operatic part (Get it? Operatic, as in Operation?). I know, I know—that’s a stretch, but it serves my purpose of presenting the details of my hernia operation in smaller doses. Believe it or not, I have been roundly chastised for the extreme length of my postings, and that makes me wonder if those who cast their slings and arrows at me have tried reading Ulysses, or the Holy Bible or the New Testament—now those tomes are really lengthy dissertations.

With the help of my three adult daughters I presented myself—no, belay that—I presented my corporeal housing, my body, to Same-day Surgery at an ungodly hour, 5:30 AM on a bleak Thursday morning. The bleakness had nothing to do with the weather or its outlook, and everything to do with my reluctance to be there. I felt the same way when I boarded a plane bound for Viet Nam to begin my 13-month tour during the height of the war, a vacation from stateside duties with all expenses paid by the US government.

The process began a few minutes after I was comfortably seated with a nice view of a big-screen wall-mounted television. A friendly and very competent nurse confirmed my identification, determined and recorded my vital numbers—height, weight, blood pressure, and medications taken in the past 12 hours. She tthen produced a hospital gown, bade me strip, don the gown with the open part to the rear, don soft non-skid booties and then recline on a gurney while she trundled me to an area near the operating rooms.

My daughters were allowed to accompany me to that area and remain there until a nurse came to roll me into the operating room. In the interim I was furnished a silver hair cover similar to that worn in Arabella. the Hollywood movie starring Jane Fonda. Incidentally, I still have dreams of Jane and the costume she wore. No, they were not, and are not, nightmares. We are just two friends, similar to two boats passing in the night.

But I digress, so on to the surgery. I was fitted with a wrist tag with my name and other significant data, especially as to the location of the surgery. When the doctor came, he wrote on my left lower side, probably something on the order of “CUT HERE.” A needle was inserted into the back of my right hand, and I was hooked up to a portable stand with two clear bags filled with unknown liquids which dripped from both bags and converged into a single line and into the line connected with the back of my hand. When all the little shut-offs were turned to shut-ons I knew my time was near, and I’ll give you three guesses what the operating nurse said as she started wheeling me towards the row of operating rooms, areas lined up precisely like the cells at San Quentin—private rooms, of course, but just as secure.

What the nurse said as we started that last mile—that Green Mile—was, “I’ll see you on the other side.” Just before I entered a state of nothingness, I asked her if she would please rephrase that cheerful remark, and she said that she meant after the surgery was over and that she would see me on the other side of the area after I had recovered from the anesthesia, and this allayed my fears—slightly.

This concludes the third part of my surgery quadrilogy, and I’m sticking to it.

Stay tuned for the fourth—and final—part of my surgery. I know, I know. I heard that long sigh of relief.